The use of LCA to assess the global ecological competitiveness of selected economies in the area of production of goods

Abstract

The article addresses the issues of green ecological competitiveness in the global system and its selected aspects. The authors propose using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology to assess the global ecological competitiveness of selected economies in their production areas, in terms of the environmental impact of their production processes, determined by the energy mix used in a particular national economy. To compare the environmental impacts of the production of a unified product in selected economies, i.e., France, India, USA and Japan, the ISO standard LCA using the ReCIPe Endpoint v1.13 and IPCC 2013 Global Warming Potential 100 methods and Sima Pro 8.5 software were used. The LCA for a 0.5 l plastic bottle was made. Data on the use of electricity for all stages of plastic processing in the bottle were made for energy mixes from France, India, Japan and USA and compared using Ecoinvent 3 database.
 Keywords: Global ecological competitiveness, green competitiveness, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), green economy, ecological competitiveness analysis.

Product category rules development as a reference for PROPER life cycle assessment reporting: recommendations

“…The use of the LCA method in calculating environmental impacts has been widely used [4]. Product environmental footprint from the results of LCA calculations can increase the competitiveness of export products [5] [6]. However, the results of LCA calculations have high variability and are difficult to compare between the same products [7].…”